Relieving Ourselves Through Social Media?

Of anxiety, that is. Maybe we tweet because we're worried we aren't being noticed.

A friend of mine has a theory about why social media has been embraced so enthusiastically as a “tell-all” medium through which people voluntarily and happily disclose incredible amounts of detail about their personal and professional lives.

He believes a lot of social media activity – tweets, updates, check-ins, blog posts, photos, videos, etc. – is driven by anxiety. Many people are simply anxious about not being heard, recognized, or acknowledged. They turn to social media to tell the world what they’re doing, thinking, eating, and feeling to ease this anxiousness.

It explains why so much social media activity is “me, me, me”; why people feel the need to disclose so many personal and professional details that are really of interest to so few people. How else to explain why people spend so much time on Twitter, Facebook, etc., offering a running commentary of their day-to-day existences?

This “tell-all” phenomenon provides some context to Facebook’s recent decision to turn itself and more of its users’ data into a public forum that can be searched and indexed by third-party applications. What was once a private network that provided users a place to share things with friends and family is now a public one that offers far more benefits to itself (more page views, more advertising) than its 400 million users.

While Facebook’s “public-ness” is both fascinating and troubling, it’s far more interesting when you take into account all the information its users disclose. If we weren’t so public already, the concerns about Facebook’s increasing public-ness would be far less of an issue.

I should make it clear that, increasingly, all of us are leading digitally public lives to one degree or another. As a digital creature, I certainly have a lot of information online about myself. But I have made an effort to maintain a healthy distance between public and private. There are many things in my professional life that don’t need to be public, and there are many things in personal life that should remain private.

In many ways, however, this isn’t the way digitally-engaged people are leading their lives. The gap between public and private has dramatically shrunk to the point where it’s difficult to tell the difference between the two.

Facebook’s changes have put a spotlight on the fact that we’ve reached a fork in the privacy road – either we go down the path of full disclosure, or we veer towards a public-private balance. My sense is the public-private path won’t be embraced until more people realize the downside of leading tell-all lives.

This essay originally appeared here. For more about the author, Mark Evans, visit his website.